Bridge Over the River Why

Month: February 2018

So I entered a submission for “love stories pertaining to bodies of water” (specific, don’t I know it) from a Canadian environmental magazine. Now, I work for a Canadian manufacturer in the environmental field even though I am based out of Texas, so that’s how I can see these sorts of things. And lo and behold- I DO have a love story that pertains to a body of water… it just happened to be in Texas. Unfortunately the whole article concept was scrapped because I was the only one who submitted anything and a lone Texas story in a Canadian magazine wasn’t really what they were after. But I’ll be damned if I won’t share it here! So I give you… a love story.

Judging by my penchant for wearing a bandana instead of a cap I peg this as 2000 or 2001.

I love rivers. My husband loves the ocean. It makes perfect, if slightly ironic sense that we met at a lake.

I had moved to Austin for college and was going through water withdrawal. I grew up in a town with 2 rivers running through it; I was never more than five minutes away from jumping in cool water on a hot summer day for all of those early years. And Austin is a green city, with a river running through the middle… but water you don’t want to jump in was a new one to me. Town Lake (inventive name, Austin) is the section of the Colorado River that runs through town, of course. I crossed it every day on my way to and from school. But there would be no swimming in Town Lake… it wasn’t THAT kind of lake. In fact, today I’m impressed with the courage of folks who paddle-board on it. What if you fall in, people? That is more faith in balance skills than I have, personally. So I saw water every day… but I couldn’t touch it, and I thought it was the only water around. I felt like I lived in a desert, honestly, in those early days in my new home.

Then one spring night my brother and I went camping at Lake Travis, just outside of Austin, with a large group of waiters from his work and their friends. There was a campfire. A guitar. Laughing. Talking. Stars overhead and a lake near at hand. It was too cold to go swimming, but THIS was water you could touch if you wanted to. It was a revelation- I hadn’t even know about this lake before that night! Driving home the next day, with classes to try to make, my brother turned to me and said “That Luke would make a good brother-in-law.” I do believe my response was to ask which one was Luke? But once a name was put with the handsome face… I didn’t disagree. Now mind you, I hadn’t said much to this stranger, it wasn’t like we stayed up all night talking and staring moodily into each others eyes or anything. He was just the shining star on the other side of a campfire, lighting up that night on top of the cliffs overlooking Lake Travis.

Soon afterwards this stranger with the wild bachelor reputation and I met again. And I can be forgiven for asking “which one was Luke” considering he called me Beth on our second meeting. He redeemed himself enough for us to wind up dancing that night, outside of the show we were both at. An official first date would follow, after some cajoling on his part. I was 19 and he felt like destiny- to say finding him so young wasn’t in the plan would be an understatement. And I was right about that too, because at the end of that first date he picked me up and swung me around and said he was going to marry me- and I told him that yes, he most certainly was.

And so it went- we spent many of our next years living in Austin and driving to Lake Travis every chance we got. I never got used to the fact that it took us 45 minutes to get to swimmable water, but at least there WAS water to swim in! We cooked, we swam, we camped, we laughed, and we lived… and 4 years later, exactly on the cliff overlooking Lake Travis where we met, he asked me to marry him. He seemed quite nervous honestly, considering the answer would have never been anything but yes.

And we are water folk to this day- fishing, paddling, camping, tubing, and swimming. When life picks up speed and it goes too long without it we feel it in our bones- and getting “on the water” becomes a priority. Our toddler loves her life jacket so much she wears it around the house and our older girls learned to swim against the current of the clean and clear San Marcos river. Water runs through our life like…well. You know.

And so we love the ocean. And we love the rivers. And we also still love one very special lake… where it all began all those 19 years ago.

“Politicians… I go to you. I stick up for you. And you no help me now… I say fuck you Politicians. I do it myself.”

Here is to voting out EVERY goddamn worthless politician that fights harder to save embryos than our children. Who thinks outlawing the means of death for one will stop it but outlawing the other isn’t even worth trying.

Here is to ANYONE that can spend the infrastructure money to make our goddamn schools fortresses so I don’t have to glance sideways to just double check that a crazed gunman isn’t stalking up the elementary school steps where my 8 year old goes EVERY. FUCKING. TIME. I. DRIVE. BY. IT. Just you know, let’s at LEAST do that while we talk about fixing the problem itself.

Right to bear arms was instituted when we had muzzle loading guns- so go back to that. Everyone can have a muzzle loader. AR fucking 15s… not so mother fucking much.

And I am SORRY- we have pussy hat marches… and yet this keeps happening in our country?! Our marches should be bigger for this issue. What would those hats look like? Can you crochet a head wound?

What stone can I throw, what effort can I make, what horn can I blow…I guess lets recall that the walls of Jericho were felled by a horn (In that made up story) so maybe, if we blow the horn often enough and harder…

The concept of taking no shit while not being an asshole about it is a knife edge to walk and might very well end up being my life’s work.

I often wonder if other adults still show up for appointments with toothpaste on their shirts. Or have such messy closets. Sometimes stuff like that can feel adolescent… but maybe it’s just human… I’m really not sure.

Somehow we ended up taking away the bottle, potty training, and taking the 2 year old out of her crib all at the same time. And by god- what felt like it would end in disaster has turned into the easiest transition on all of those. Third times a charm I guess? I think we as a society wait too late to potty train these days- we started at 25 months… you gotta start these toddlers before they hit the defiant stage- because early twos they still want to be super helpful.

What are we going to do with the extra $100 a month we now are saving on diapers? Buy all the food this growing toddler is sucking down… it’ll be a wash, methinks.

I should paint more. I should write more. I should cut and color my hair on a more frequent schedule. I should read more actual books. I should clean… I should I should I should I should. I should also probably stop beating myself up over it…

The girls were asking what the cats’ names would be if they didn’t have their current names. I suggested they all be named Stoppeeingonthebathmat.

The dog is scared of the fire alarm and now every time I cook he frantically jumps over the baby gate to get into the other side of the house. You freaking burn something ONE time around here…